Victim of perceived thug does end up in jail

[attackfighter]

so there are other trovons out there?

[JollyRoger]

It's ok. Zimmerman is out on bail and free to take care of them.

[kramerfan86]

Originally Posted by attackfighter

so there are other trovons out there?

Yes what a shocking idea that in a nation of over 300 million people two people have the same name.

[Disgustipated]

naming your kid that is a sure way to get him killed as we have seen in Florida.

[JollyRoger]

I'm wouldn't name my kid John, Robert, Martin, or Malcolm.

[Berzerker]

Originally Posted by kramerfan86

It certainly doesnt make it impossible. Especially if he goes around and falls into discriminatory thought like "oh look black person, they must be up to no good".

I never said it was impossible, that was your strawman... But they had a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood and the suspects were young black males, so your characterization of his mindset is slanted by media BS.

[attackfighter]

Originally Posted by JollyRoger

I'm wouldn't name my kid John, Robert, Martin, or Malcolm.

Speaking of Malcolm X, does anyone else think that he only received attention because his name was phonetically pleasant? Prior to his rise in fame he seemed completely unremarkable in every way. Elijah Muhammad, a more important member of the nation of islam, never received nearly as much attention and the only explanation that I can think of is that his name didn't sound as cool. Attaching X to the end of your name makes you sound like some kind of super villain.

Also, on nation of islam, how is it so popular when the premise of it is so silly? It seems to be some kind of alternative to Christianity, which is percieved as a white religion by many black USAians, yet they could have picked a better alternative than a religion dominated by Arabs. Why not pick some tribal African animistic religion, or Egyptian Polytheism. Why exchange one non-black religion for another? And are they not aware that Arabs are perhaps the most discriminating people on Earth, with the most extensive history of slavery? It just makes no sense why they'd pick Islam of all things. And as far as their actual adherence to Islam goes, they take so many liberties with it that they're really practising it in name only.

[Traitorfish]

Originally Posted by attackfighter

Speaking of Malcolm X, does anyone else think that he only received attention because his name was phonetically pleasant? Prior to his rise in fame he seemed completely unremarkable in every way. Elijah Muhammad, a more important member of the nation of islam, never received nearly as much attention and the only explanation that I can think of is that his name didn't sound as cool. Attaching X to the end of your name makes you sound like some kind of super villain.

There were lots of NoIers with "X" as their surname, Malcolm was simply the most well-known. The reason that he's famous is because he was a powerful rhetorician and orator, and, for all his flaws, an intelligent and insightful critic of American society. The reason that Elijah Muhammad is less famous is because he was a philandering old coot who made up stupid stories about wizards. There's a bit of a difference in that.

Also, on nation of islam, how is it so popular when the premise of it is so silly? It seems to be some kind of alternative to Christianity, which is percieved as a white religion by many black USAians, yet they could have picked a better alternative than a religion dominated by Arabs.

Arabs aren't anything approaching a majority among Muslims- they represent maybe a sixth of the total world population, and there are more in both South Asia and South-East Asia- so that's not really accurate. You may as well ask why so many Northern European adhere to a religion "dominated by Romans".

[attackfighter]

Islam is an Arab dominated religion. Maybe not numerically so, but in other ways...

[Traitorfish]

...Such as?

[kramerfan86]

Originally Posted by Berzerker

I never said it was impossible, that was your strawman... But they had a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood and the suspects were young black males, so your characterization of his mindset is slanted by media BS.

Its also a neighborhood with black residents, so he was still stereotyping black=suspicious. Definitely not racist, but he is discriminatory.

[taillesskangaru]

Originally Posted by Traitorfish

...Such as?

Scripture, funding and prestige. IIRC the bulk of funding for madrassas in the world come from Wahhabi Saudis.

[Traitorfish]

But, again, you could say much the same thing about Christianity and Romans.

[MagisterCultuum]

Perhaps if Christianity considered scripture to be inspired only in Latin, considered all translations but the Vulgate to be mere paraphrases, and strongly pressured all Christians to learn Latin...

Western Christianity during the middle ages might not have been too far from that, but people still knew that the Vulgate was just a translation of the Greek, even if they did think that it was the Greek Septuagint rather than the original Hebrew version of the old testament which was inspired. There was not much pressure for everyone to learn Greek, as it was rare for even the best educated priests to understand it.

[Traitorfish]

There's a distinction between the Arabic language holding a special status in Islamic tradition and Islam being "dominated by Arabs", that is, by people who are themselves Arabs. It's quite possible to uphold the former with utter stringency while blowing the latter to little bits, as Khomeini went to some lengths to demonstrate.

[Formaldehyde]

African-Americans are 4 times as likely to be shot by police than whites, which is actually a drastic improvement over the 70s when they were 8 times as likely to be victims.

Training to overcome institutional racial bias in policing

Police officers in America shoot and kill African-Americans four times more often than whites, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That figure actually reflects progress from the 1970s, when the ratio was 8 to 1.

These stark numbers raise serious questions about bias in American law enforcement. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who shot and killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, was not a sworn officer, but to understand the deeper racial implications of the case — and what the nation might learn from them — attention must shift to the police and their practices. The widespread hunger for justice generated by Martin's death has fueled a broader re-examination of race, racism and criminal justice in America. That examination ought to focus on the nature and extent of institutional bias in policing.

I come from a law enforcement family, have studied institutional bias in policing for nearly a decade, and have advised London's Metropolitan Police Service on issues of race and diversity. Understanding the link between police practices and persistent problems is critical for helping police departments develop effective strategies and training for addressing bias and building legitimacy with the public.

In the past three or so months, Martin is one of three unarmed black teenagers to be killed by police or community patrols. On Feb. 2, 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was fatally shot in his Bronx, N.Y., apartment by an undercover NYPD narcotics officer. Police officers who had observed Graham on the street claimed they saw a gun in his waistband. On March 24 in Pasadena, Calif., 19-year-old Kendrec McDade was shot and killed by police responding to a report of a stolen laptop. Officers maintain they thought McDade was armed and reaching into his waistband for a gun. In addition to a local police investigation of the shooting, the FBI is conducting its own.

In Sanford on the night of Martin's death, police detained and questioned Zimmerman for upward of seven hours before releasing him. Police did not subject Zimmerman to drug and alcohol testing, a routine practice in homicide cases. Officers did not check Zimmerman's criminal record until the day after the shooting. Police had Martin's cellphone, yet failed to examine his calls. Had they done so, they would have discovered Martin was on the phone with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting and could have questioned her immediately.

Police did not canvass the neighborhood the night of the shooting. If they had, they would have realized that Martin died fewer than 100 feet from the house of his father's fiancee. His body could have been identified rather than taken to the morgue and classified as a "John Doe." Police allowed more than a week to pass before interviewing a teenage witness to part of the struggle between Martin and Zimmerman. These are but some of the problems with the police investigation that led people across the country to take to the streets in protest.

What caused police to treat Martin's death as such an open-and-shut case? In the weeks and months ahead, local and federal officials will continue to search for answers. Nothing publicly reported thus far suggests overt or intentional police discrimination. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that bias did not play a significant role.

Uncovering institutional bias requires identifying disparities in outcomes resulting from "the way things have always been done" — established policies or practices that have a disproportionate and negative impact on minorities.

This kind of institutionalized inequality has been a major point of contention between communities of color and law enforcement for decades. It is found in the acid test of inner cities where the numbers of those stopped and frisked, arrested and incarcerated are substantially higher for African-Americans and Latinos than for whites. It lives in community concerns over racial profiling and aggressive police tactics. It exists in the fact that a black man in America is four times more likely than a white man to be shot and killed by police. It is the backdrop against which the Martin case will play out.

The problem is not that law enforcement fails to take claims of institutional bias seriously. As a researcher, I have seen police chiefs' commitment to more dynamic forms of community engagement and organizational training. The problem is that they need new tools, better strategies and more effective training programs to identify and eliminate institutional bias from their departments. Recognizing and addressing that need is what is at stake in the Trayvon Martin investigation.

Michael Motto is a fellow of the Truman National Security Project and was a Gates Scholar at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology. He teaches and conducts research on policing and multiculturalism.

[Disgustipated]

you do realize african americans commit more crime than whites right? So maybe that's why they are shot more. I'm just sayin'

Call me racist if you want, but I don't think it's racist to state the truth.

[Formaldehyde]

So it's acceptable to shoot unarmed blacks far more frequently because as a group they commit more crimes per capita than whites do? That there isn't anything inherently wrong with institutional bias and racial profiling in American society?

Do you think you might feel differently if you were an African-American who was incessantly profiled based on the acts of others, and who was at far greater risk of injury or even death as a result?

[Disgustipated]

yeah it would bother me to be profiled, and I do feel bad for the law abiding african americans. But you know what, instead of complaining to the police about it, maybe they should work to improve their communities, get an education, and work to prevent crime in the first place.

[Flying Pig]

Originally Posted by Formaldehyde

So it's acceptable to shoot unarmed blacks far more frequently because as a group they commit more crimes per capita than whites do? They are merely the civilian equivalent of "collateral damage"? That there isn't anything inherently wrong with obvious institutional bias and racial profiling in American society?

Do you think you might feel differently if you were an African-American who was incessantly profiled based on the acts of others, and who was at far greater risk of injury or even death as a result?

No, what he's saying is that a greater proportion of guilty people doing shooting-worthy things are black, since a greater proportion of criminals are black.